


on hairpins

by Lirazel



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the citizens of Attolia complain that the Thief of Eddis is a terrible influence on their queen, they have no way of knowing the truth of their own words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on hairpins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arianrhod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arianrhod/gifts).



The more conservative (stuffy, as far as Gen is concerned, but whenever he's tempted to refer to them thus in public, a glance from his wife has him biting his tongue) citizens of Attolia have complained since the day their queen’s marriage was announced that the Thief of Eddis is a terrible influence on the Queen of Attolia. 

 

Gen has to use all his skills to keep from laughing when he hears these whispers by overfed barons at banquets or the casual gossip between servants who don’t know they’re being watched (a king eavesdropping while perched in the beams of the palace kitchen or crouching unseen behind a screen in a guest room is entirely unregal, but old habits don’t ever die entirely, Gen knows. They can’t even be killed). Gen’s mouth twitches, and if his wife is with him, she levels him a formidable look. But Gen can’t help but find it amusing.

 

The citizens have no way of knowing the truth of their own words.

 

\--

 

Lydia, the newest servant at the palace, realizes just how unprepared she was for her new post when she walks into the queen’s bedroom one day with arms full of fresh linen and sees the king’s attendant—the tall, long-eyelashed, broad-shouldered soldier whose name she doesn’t remember even as the lines of his narrow waist are vivid in her mind—sitting with a pained look on his face and his curly hair adorned with dozens of jewel-studded hairpins, the king and queen on either side of him, the king shouting, “Faster and smoother this time!,” the queen’s face set with concentration.

 

Lydia backs out of the room before they notice her, stifling a giggle when she hears the king say, “Stop looking so constipated, Costis. You look beautiful, and it isn’t many soldiers who’ve had their queen’s fingers in their hair.”

 

When Lydia relates what she’d seen to the head housekeeper at evening meal, the rotund old woman snorts. “That’s not the strangest thing you’ll see in this palace by far. I’d wager she slapped the back of his head when he said that.”

 

Lydia knows that her mother, head housekeeper herself for a baron, would be scandalized by the king saying such things and the queen smacking the back of the king’s head. But Lydia thinks that at least her new post will not be boring.

 

\--

 

Costis is, as always, the first to suffer. Five times a day he’ll look down and see that the sash of his tunic has been unknotted, and as he yanks it back again, he silently curses the king. Even a king as young as Attolis—half boy, really, and younger than Costis—should be mature enough not to tease his attendants in such a childish way. But it’s the burden Costis has to bear, he reminds himself, thinking of his vow to serve this king and his god. The thief’s god, with his name he shares with the king, must be every bit as mischievous as his favored servant if this is the life Costis is resigned to. (But Costis has begun to leave offerings for the thief god, too, and he is always honest in his thanksgiving before the altar.) 

 

It takes him a few days to realize that sometimes the knot is unknotted when the king is not in the room. At first he reminds himself that simply because the king doesn’t appear to be in the room doesn’t mean he isn’t there, and he sighs, supposing Attolis must be lounging in the eaves or hiding in a chest.

 

But one day when the king is very definitely touring a series of small villages with the visiting Queen of Eddis and has left Costis behind with instructions to ‘watch over the queen,’ Costis shifts in the middle of a meeting with the minister of agriculture (shifts in boredom, in truth, but Costis, unlike the king he serves, does his best not to allow his lack of interest to show), and he feels that his tunic is looser around his body than usual. When he surreptitiously looks down he finds that, yes, the ends of his sash are dangling around his ankles. He begins to wonder if the palace is haunted. Or if the king’s god is more accustomed to taking physical form and visiting the human world to torment its inhabitants than Costis had thought.

 

Tedious meeting completed, Costis double-checks that his sash is as it should be as he waits outside the queen’s suite so that he can escort her to dinner. He double-knots it this time, just to be safe. But just a few minutes later, as he’s walking a step behind the queen down a corridor and nods his head at a passing minister, something red flashes at the corner of his eye, and when he takes the next step, he nearly trips over the trailing ends of his sash. 

 

His head is reeling as he steadies himself, disbelieving. Surely she would never—? He knows there is more to the queen than she allows anyone to see, but she’s so regal and—surely she had not—?

 

But the queen is wearing red.

 

\--

 

Akakios, the kitchen boy, doesn’t ever tell anyone that every time he wakes in the night to relieve his bladder, his sandals have disappeared from under his cot. It would be no use: no one would believe him, and by the time the rooster crows outside his window, waking him for the day, they’re always waiting just where he left them.

 

\--

 

"Irene," Eddis says carefully, gaze firmly on the view in front of her. The olive trees look especially beautiful stained gold by the sunset. "Are you trying to pull the hairpins out of my hair?"

Eddis watches out of the corner of her eye as as Attolia withdraws her hand in a perfectly elegant motion, tucking it into the folds of her skirt, a studiously innocent expression that Eddis finds far too familiar on her face. The queen of Attolia turns her head to focus again on the view the two women had been admiring from the balcony of Eddis's room.

"I cannot imagine what you mean," Attolia says calmly.

Eddis snorts. Unruffled by the vulgarity, Attolia continues to dispassionately survey her kingdom, but Eddis is quite certain she sees the corners of Attolia's mouth twitching. 

_Oh, yes, little cousin. You picked just the right wife indeed._

 

\--

 

The Baron Hippias is nothing if not aware of the insecurity of his new position as Secretary of the Archives. A few days after being installed as the master of the queen’s spy network, he has the name ‘Relius’ carved onto the flat back of an amulet that he carries in his sash, and whenever he feels that he might be growing complacent, he flips over the amulet and looks at the name. Loyalty is the quality everyone says is most necessary to a good career as Secretary of the Archives, but Hippias is quite certain that prudence trumps all.

 

So he always makes certain to lock his office whenever he leaves it, and not even the servants have a copy of the heavy iron key he carries around on a chain around his neck. The housekeeper glares at him when he lets her in to dust and tidy up—only when he is there to keep a sharp eye on her—but Hippias is not willing to take any risks. He _always_ locks the door behind him.

 

And yet there is no denying that pens have started disappearing off of his desk. He notices the very first time, as he keeps them in an alabaster box by the inkpot, always six of them exactly. He has developed a habit of scanning the room carefully whenever he enters to see if anything has been disturbed. Nothing ever has, not until the first day a pen is missing. Cold grips him even as he assures himself that it must be here between a few pages of parchment or fallen onto the floor—he knows that he always returns each pen to the box when his work is completed, but—

 

But he cannot find it anywhere. 

 

It happens again, and again: as often as he replaces the missing pens with new ones, he enters the office to find that only five are waiting for him in the box. Each time his stomach lurches lower; he’s become even more conscientious about locking the door than before and it is always locked when he goes to open it, and he’s taken to carrying the key on a chain around his neck so that he can feel its iron against his skin, and, true, there are two windows in the room, but they’re three stories off the ground and not a tree in sight—no one could possibly enter the room that way, unless it was a winged messenger of one of the gods. _And yet his pens keep disappearing._

 

He can feel sweat breaking cold on his skin on the day he bows low to the queen and confesses that someone has found a way to access his office.

 

“I have begun locking any possibly-sensitive documents in a chest with three padlocks, my queen, and I have not noticed them being disturbed, but I do not trust that they are safe, not when someone can make his way into my office so frequently. I have no explanation, my queen—the lock is good, and I’ve had it changed twice since this began, each time watching the locksmith work myself so that I can ensure he does not make a copy. No one could come in through the windows, it simply is not possible. And yet someone is entering the room. I am requesting a guard to be posted outside it whenever I am not present, perhaps multiple guards, if necessary. I keep very little vital information written down, but it’s possible that a shrewd reader could make something of what is there, and we simply cannot risk that, my queen, not when the Medes grow more powerful with each day.”

 

Hippias prides himself on his observational skills, and so he notices that the queen’s expression is unlike any he has seen on her face before. Almost always, the queen’s face is impassive, revealing nothing, and though it is certainly unreadable now, there is a presence of some sort of emotion Hippias tries in vain to label. Is this the face Relius had seen when the queen decided not to trust him? Is this the end?

 

The king, who Hippias does not underestimate but who he avoids addressing directly, shifts in his chair. He still sits in it like an insolent boy, not a monarch. Hippias knows that the man is dangerous in ways most could never imagine, but it is difficult for him not to be scornful of someone so insouciant.

 

“Do you forget, Baron Hippias,” the king asks lazily, his Eddisian accent thicker than usual, “that your office is housed in a palace occupied by a thief?”

 

Where Hippias’s skin had been clammy, it is suddenly washed with heat. How could he have failed to think of that? His cheeks must be scarlet by now. The king has been making _sport_ of him, and now he has come and reported it to the queen like a vexed child squealing on a playmate and he will look a fool and—

 

“My apologizes for your worries, Baron.” The queen’s voice is very even, just as it always is, and the strange expression has been tucked away behind the impassivity she usually wears. “You are a most conscientious adviser, and your vigilance is a service to Attolia. I will ensure that the office is impenetrable myself. Worry yourself no more.”

 

The king gives Hippias a lazy smile as Hippias bows and hurries out of the room. Back in his office, Hippias scrawls graphic pictures of the king meeting various bloody fates on scrap pieces of parchment. But he burns them all to ash in the censer before he leaves and then dumps the ashes out of the window. Prudence, always.

 

\--

 

When Phresine discovers that the bracelet she always wears has disappeared from her wrist, she walks directly to the king and holds out her hand. The king looks her over, notices the missing bracelet, and grins widely in that way that sometimes makes Phresine want to brush his hair out of his eyes and tuck him into bed. He’s such a very _young_ man.

 

“Not I this time, Phresine, I swear it.”

 

“I am quite certain there is no one else in this palace who could steal jewelry right off of my body without my noticing, your Highness,” Phresine answers dryly. _Such_ a young man.

 

“There’s another now,” the king answers, grin deepening, and Phresine follows the line of his arm to see who he is pointing at.

 

She sighs.

 

\--

 

Baron Karpos, Chancellor of the Exchequer, goes to the queen’s physician when he notices that his fork keeps disappearing from his hand in the middle of meals.

 

“Senility must have found me,” he explains to Petrus. “There is no other explanation I can find. I am so certain that I am holding the fork and then the next minute…” The elderly man shakes his head sadly. “Perhaps it is time for me to retire. I had thought my mind quick enough still to be of service to the queen, but if it is this compromised, I am a danger to the treasury.”

 

Petrus asks many questions, eyebrows dipping in confusion when he hears that vanishing cutlery is the Baron’s only symptom. When he hears that Karpos meets with this trouble only at banquets with the queen and king, his face clears.

 

“It’s a fleeting sickness,” he assures the bent-backed baron. “It lasts for a short time only. But you appear to be recovering already; I’m sure it will vex you no longer.”

 

Karpos knows he is not _that_ senile, not yet. “A sickness? With such a specific symptom? Only forks?”

 

But Petrus insists that he set his mind at ease, and so, unconvinced, Karpos leaves to the physician’s promises that he will alert the monarchs to this situation simply so they will be informed of everything going on within the palace. “It is not contagious, though,” Petrus says, showing Karpos out the door. “And as I said, I’m certain you will make a full recovery almost immediately. If your symptoms return, come visit me and we will see if they need further looking into.”

 

Despite Karpos’ incredulity, the next time he dines with the royal couple, his fork stays firmly in his hand for the entire meal. And, coincidentally as far as Karpos knows, the day after his meeting with Petrus, two whole barrels of his favorite dried fish, a luxury imported from Medea and typically found in Attolia only on the royal table itself, are delivered to his house. The man who delivers them has no idea who sent them. Karpos gives a gold cup in offering to Hephestia.

 

\--

 

There is no warning: Aglaia is arranging the queen’s jewels in her jewel-box while the queen sits in a chair nearby reading over reports from Teleus when Aglaia’s hair, which she had fixed firmly in place at the nape of her neck that morning as always, suddenly tumbles down around her shoulders and the queen lets out an abrupt, triumphant sound. Shocked, Aglaia jerks upright, dropping a lapis necklace onto the table with a clatter, hand shooting up to feel the locks of hair now hanging loose. She gapes at the queen, who looks shockingly young and pretty with her face flushed and eyes shining, her untouchable beauty melting into something almost girlish. Aglaia has the dizzy thought that even if Attolia were sitting on her throne in her coronation dress at this moment, no one would recognize her.

 

The queen’s expression solidifies back to dignity as suddenly as Aglaia’s hair had fallen, though her cheeks are still pink. “I beg your pardon, Aglaia,” the queen says, and her voice is steady but perhaps a bit higher than usual. “I simply—” The queen stops, biting her lip, something Aglaia has never seen her do before, and it makes Aglaia’s head spin: it’s too vulnerable a gesture by far for Attolia’s cold queen. “I must speak to my husband. Here are your hairpins.”

 

Aglaia stares at the bronze pins in the queen’s outstretched hands, trying to wrap her mind around what has just happened. She takes the pins dumbly, and the queen gives her a sharp nod—followed by smile that’s wider than any Aglaia has ever seen on the queen. Her hand, clasping the hairpins tightly, falls to her side as she watches the queen glide out of the room. 

 

And the shock must be making her hallucinate, for she could _swear_ that she hears the queen scamper through the anteroom and into the corridor like a little girl.


End file.
